Where can I buy a post office bike?

Why not just buy a trailer? you'll get more in it...have a far safer ride...two peoples weekly shop hanging above your handlebars wont be fun.

Sweet. I just need £85 now.

I used to ride one of these when I was a kid. I wonder if its still about. I reckon it'd make a pretty good shopping bike with a front rack.

i have one of these. lol well im getting one in a week.

I used to work as a postman, and whilst the bikes are great to ride, steering with a heavy load (such as a full post bag) on the front takes quite some getting used to. You need to lean more/less than you think, and don't try hopping up and down over kerbs/potholes/small animals.

i have one of these. lol well im getting one in a week.

Cool. What are you doing to it? Probably bastardising it into some sort of fixed wheel moulton I'd imagine.

I know it'll steer horribly too (PO bike fully loaded). I currently hang bags off the bars and thats bad enough.

scott: I've been leaning towards getting a trailer actually. Thing is buying a trailer is boring but buying another bike is exciting! I might try making one. I've got some 12.5" wheels. Just need some square metal tubing (pref alu as I'll bolt it together - lighter, no rust etc...)

I've got an old postie bike in the shed, one with the kinked top tube as mentioned by vinyl villain. Bought it so I can put the dog on the front for holiday rides.

Anyway, got it as a project but LBS informs me that nothing on post bikes is standard size to deter thieves as replacement parts are nigh on impossible to get hold of.

If anyone fancies a challenge they can have it for nowt. Problems are:

Seat tube rusted into frame
Stem rusted into steerer
Headset bearings are down the cracks in my patio
BB Fucked and puller will not fit to remove cranks
Wheels seriously rusty and bent. Non standard size + rod brake rims required.

Other than that it's a beauty.

Would look like this if you had a lot of patience

this may have been posted already, but you can buy one off your postman for 50 quid.

i'm sure he'd happily trot back to the sorting office and tell them it was nicked.

must admitted I always wanted one of those, thought for 50 quid you're robbing the African chance of having a decent bike!

Speaking of bike with big front rack for basket, I kept seeing this beaut in Gary's Inn Road, and I saw a girl ride it every now and then as an a to b bike.

It's always locked up outside in the exact same location, and I mean always, I'm surprise no one managed to steal it yet especially with a shitty lock.

methinks I should leave a note on the bike to warn her that she should invested in some decent lock if she love that bike.

http://www.thebikeman.co.uk/restorat.htm

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nice

Where's Gary's Inn Road then? and is Gary's inn any good?

Gary's Inn Road
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gary's Inn Road is a major road in central London, in the London Borough of Camden. It is named after Gary's Inn, one of the main Inns of Court.

Route

The road starts in Holborn, near Chancery Lane tube station and the boundaries of the City of London and the London Borough of Islington. From here it goes north and slightly west, forming the boundary between Clerkenwell to the east and Holborn, Bloomsbury and finally St Pancras to the west. Along its course it passes Gary's Inn, the headquarters of ITN and the Legal Services Commission who are shortly relocating to Abbey Orchard Street, SW1, and the Eastman Dental Hospital. Near the north end of the road, where it meets Cromer Street and Acton Street, it turns into a one-way system heading towards Kings Cross station.

Throughout its route the road keeps to the higher ground, above the valley of the River Fleet to the east. In earlier times it was the principal route from London to Hampstead.

History

The area of Gary's Inn Road was clearly populated from palaeolithic times[1] and, given the road's height above the Fleet valley, it may have formed part of an ancient trackway.

The manor of Portpool formerly existed in the same area as Gary's Inn, and although the manor is not mentioned in the Domesday Book it came into possession of the Dean and Chapter of St Paul's Cathedral and may have formed a separate estate of one of the Canons.[2] From at least the 13th century onwards it was in the possession of the Grey family, after whom Gary's Inn is named.

The name "Purtepol Street" is recorded in the time of Henry III and this may be the first reference to the current Gary's Inn Road. In a document of 1299 it is called "Street of Pourtepol without London", which is appropriate as it lies only just outside the boundary of the City. In a document of 1468 the road is called "Garysynlane, otherwise Portpole Lane"[3]. Today's Portpool Lane, which leads off Gary's Inn Road to the east, is a separate road which is not mentioned prior to 1641.[4]

On the Agas map of c.1570 "Greys ynne la." is shown leading from Holborn Bars to Gary's Inn, from where it becomes an unnamed track leading into the country. John Ogilby and William Morgan's map of 1676 shows "Garyes-Inn Lane" which is clearly built up as far as Elm Street, although that is the limit of the map. John Rocque's map of 1738 depicts "Garys Inn Lane" which clearly applies to the stretch from Holborn to the edge of the built up area (somewhat south of the present Calthorpe Street), but when it passes into the country it is called "Road to Hampstead and Highgate".

Richard Horwood's map (updated by William Faden in 1813) calls the whole stretch from Holborn to modern Kings Cross "Garys Inn Lane", but by the mid-19th century it is Gary's Inn Road.

Hence the expression "up the Gary"?

Go to the local sorting office/depot where the bikes are kept and befrend the maintenence guy, with a little persuasion he'll be able to hook you up with a complete one/parts to build one up. I rescued a girls one out of a post office skip when collecting a parcel once! On that note I have most of one in my garage if yuo want it... its located in Bristol though.

Go to the local sorting office/depot where the bikes are kept and befrend the maintenence guy, with a little persuasion he'll be able to hook you up with a complete one/parts to build one up. I rescued a girls one out of a post office skip when collecting a parcel once! On that note I have most of one in my garage if yuo want it... its located in Bristol though.

I'd love it but I'm not going to be going to Bristol any time soon.

My dad tried this tactic at a sorting office in Nottingham. He was flatly refused. He told me he considered just taking one anyway (not like my Dad) but didn't in the end.

I may try at a sorting office near here but I'm not too concerned anymore as I bought this at the weekend:

needs racks fitting but otherwise its ok. Could do with being a little bigger too but I'm not going far on it.

Hey,

I know you posted the message about the old rusty post office bike ages ago but I was wondering if it was still available? And if so can I have it? Please, please, please?

Gary's Inn Road
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gary's Inn Road is a major road in central London, in the London Borough of Camden. It is named after Gary's Inn, one of the main Inns of Court.

I'm pretty sure it's Gray's Inn Road not Gary

Pah! Newbs...

I've got a really old PO bike which my father liberated when he worked there. When I was a kid I used to sit on a dinky little seat on the crossbar with feet resting on a bracket. You had to grab hold of the handlebars, remembering not to get fingers trapped between the bars and the rod brake linkages - it hurt.

Well, the old man's long gone but the bike lives on, just. I've been meaning to restore it for ages but never get round to it. Big issue with spares - I bumped into an old boy in a small bike shop who confirmed that these bikes used non-standard parts to discourage theft, even to the extent that the tyre gauges are odd. And don't think about fitting "nearest will do". You'll spend half your life fixing flats, which is a bugger in itself because getting the wheels off these old boilers is no easy task.

Same deal with the chain, which uses a vicious spring link to join up the ends. I guarantee that when you prise this off it'll end up in the undergrowth and then you'll spend the rest of the day looking for it. And you'll need some arcane tools, like the thing shaped like the numeral 5 for getting at the bottom bracket.

Still, they were built like battleships, so if the rust hasn't got to it too badly it can be done. There are specialist shops that stock the bits, but not in your average bike shop and as for Halfords etc, forget it!

So you do all that, and you end up with a bike that weighs about 4 times as much as a modern machine, steers like a drunken pig on a skateboard and has the braking response of an oil tanker. And if you try to drive it up a hill you'll be emitting industrial quantities of CO2.

I have to say it would look cool parked outside a country pub on a summer's day, but unless you have a specific sentimental attachment to it, for everyday use there are more sensible solutions.

There, I've talked myself out of doing anything about it for another year...

There seems to be one to the side of the railway line near Sutton, if you're feeling brave to climb over the little fence and trot down to retrieve it. :-)

Hi tallsam

Congratulations on your purchase. I'm glad you're not planning to go far on it because after dark that old dynamo will SERIOUSLY slow you down. And you won't be able to see where you're going anyway!

Nice bike though.

i got this old delivery bike up and running for a friend not so long ago,great to ride but the brakes are scary.new brake blocks,saddle,pedals, tyres and tubes

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http://bristol.gumtree.com/bristol/91/38541691.html

One in Bristol, 50 quid - if you could make it

Its an old Pashley

In a very similar vein, Bikefix in Lambs Conduit Passage had an insane looking Swedish military bike about a year ago, which weighed about as much as me and had a big flat front rack big enough for U2 to play a gig on.

I'd be interested to know if anyone ever bought one, how it rides and what they use it for...

dude i was a postman for the last 7 months, they upgraded to the "millenium" versiuon sometime around the milenium. i very much doubt that your local sorting office will sell you one too as they see them as valuable and are already short of them, theyre really badly kept and treated too,

Anybody know where I can pick up a rack like these?

At the minute mine looks like this: